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Re: Could /Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt be relicensed under a permissive license?

From
Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Date
Dec 10, 2019, 20:58 UTC
Message-ID
<2ed3e8f1-082d-4eb3-f1f1-e1d184003ced@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<20191210205056.GA14079@coredump.intra.peff.net>
On 12/10/2019 3:50 PM, Jeff King wrote:
Show 9 quoted lines
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 03:38:35PM -0500, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> 
>> On 12/10/2019 3:10 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>> KOLANICH <kolan_n@mail.ru> writes:
>>
>> I don't appear to have the original message? Perhaps it was
>> directly addressed to Junio?
> 
> It made it to me via the list, too.
Hm... I have had messages from the list be delayed somehow by Gmail.
Show 17 quoted lines
>>> GPL copyright protects the expression of the document, but the
>>> copyright protects only the expression, and does not protect the
>>> underlying format itself and the idea behind it.  So I do not see a
>>> need to relicense the documentation text at all.
>>
>> (Insert "I am not a lawyer" warning.)
>>
>> I think this is the correct interpretation. One can interact with
>> binary files as you want. In fact, there are likely privately
>> licensed products that interact with Git's pack-files even though
>> their format documentation is under GPL.
>>
>> What _could_ be problematic is repeating the documentation directly
>> in another permissive-licensed repository.
> 
> That's my understanding as well. That said, I would not be opposed to
> some kind of statement in the documentation making our view explicit.
A similar statement could apply to the following files:

Documentation/technical/bitmap-format.txt Documentation/technical/commit-graph-format.txt Documentation/technical/http-protocol.txt Documentation/technical/index-format.txt Documentation/technical/long-running-process-protocol.txt Documentation/technical/pack-format.txt Documentation/technical/pack-protocol.txt Documentation/technical/protocol-capabilities.txt Documentation/technical/protocol-common.txt Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt

and perhaps others, including future additions.

Would it be better to have a new file in Documentation/technical/ that describes this view?

-Stolee
Previous: Jeff KingNext: Ed Maste
Message 5 of 11 in “Could /Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt be relicensed under a permissive license?”
  1. KOLANICHDec 10, 2019
  2. Junio C HamanoDec 10, 2019
  3. Derrick StoleeDec 10, 2019
  4. Jeff KingDec 10, 2019
  5. Derrick StoleeDec 10, 2019
  6. Ed MasteDec 10, 2019
  7. Junio C HamanoDec 10, 2019
  8. KOLANICHDec 11, 2019
  9. Johannes SchindelinDec 11, 2019
  10. brian m. carlsonDec 13, 2019
  11. Jakub NarebskiDec 15, 2019

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

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